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The Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era “represents the latest achievement in adapting Marxism” in China, he said.

The Communist Party of China’s General-Secretary Xi Jinping has unveiled what is thought to be its new program for the coming years at the opening session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Forum participants pledged to send election observers to Venezuela on July 30, when elections for the National Constituent Assembly will take place.

“We will send an electoral observer mission to the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela, because we support it,” Brazil’s Workers’ Party President Gleisi Hoffmann said.

During the Forum’s closing, Hoffman pressed that “calling the people to vote” is the best way to decide the future of a country.

The participants of the event have pledged to provide an electoral oberver mission during the National Constituent Assembly in Venezuela proposed by President Nicolas Maduro. | Photo: EFE

The four-day convention also saw the representatives of 18 leftist political parties from 26 countries issue a number of resolutions in a 24-page document titled “Consensus of our America.”

The document expressed support for the defense of the peace negotiation process between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, an end to the revived U.S. blockade on Cuba and support for former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, who has been accused of corruption by Brazil’s right-wing, coup-imposed government.

Communist politicians in Kerala have a long history of creating alternatives that push back against the narrative that capitalism is the only option.

It was a time of “titanic struggle against world fascism,” writes Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad 35 years after he overcome the odds to become the governor of one of the first states in the non-communist world to elect a communist government.

The year was 1957. World War II had ended, India had won independence from British colonial rule and the country had been partitioned to create the state of Pakistan.

Among the palm-lined beaches, backwaters and canals of India’s southwestern state of Kerala, there was a fomenting movement against imperialism, capitalism and racist parochialism led by the Communist Party of India.

With Namboodiripad as its leader, the CPI, in a historic precedent, went on to win the state’s very first election.

But just two years later it would be illegally overthrown by the Indian National Congress, which sought to rollback CPI’s efforts in a vigorous push to the right.

Still, the seeds had been planted. The CPI came to power again six years later in 1965, then again in 1967, 1980, 1987, 1996, 2006 and most recently, 2016.

The communist movement that pioneered radical land and educational reforms in Kerala early on — pushing the state to outrank the rest of the country on a number of fronts — has in the last five decades shown no signs of paling.

With the CPI (Marxist) — an offshoot of the original CPI — in power since May 2016, their Left Democratic Front government, a coalition of various communist and socialist groups in the state, has achieved a number of victories in the past year that peg the small, southwestern state miles ahead of the rest of Modi-governed India.

For while India, under the leadership of right-wing Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, succumbs to “unbridled market fundamentalism,” authoritarianism and “minority-hating parochialism,” say the CPI (M), Kerala’s literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy and school enrollment rates are on par with the First World.

Communist movement sets a standard

“The Communist movement in Kerala has grown in a land that had been prepared for it by the social reform movements that preceded it,” the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, told teleSUR by email.

“If reformers … were the torch bearers of renaissance in Kerala, (then) Communist leaders … were instrumental in translating their vision for our society into political action,” he added. “Even now, the left in the state is closely aligned with all such movements that profess and practice progressive ideas, standing by the oppressed, marginalized and disadvantaged.”

The history of left governments in Kerala has forged the way for the “Kerala Model” of development to the world — a people’s alternative to the rising forces of globalization.

Michael Parenti, in his 1997 book “Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism”, wrote:

“Consider Kerala, a state in India where the actions of popular organizations and mass movements have won important victories over the last forty years against politico-economic oppression, generating a level of social development considerably better than that found in most of the Third World, and accomplished without outside investment.

Though Kerala has no special sources of wealth, it has had decades of communist organizing and political struggle that reached and moved large numbers of people and breathed life into the state’s democracy.”

For 28-year-old Asif Ahamed, who lives in the state, Kerala’s communist party is easily the answer in a country governed by the whims of “ethno-nationalist fascism.”

“They have stuck by the people ever since, contrary to the corporate government that have been in power in Delhi. In the end it’s an extremely easy choice to choose the Communist party in Kerala over any other in the country,” he told teleSUR.

He agrees that the longstanding history of communist movements has helped the state to soar ahead.

“Kerala over the years has always been a step ahead of other states. This is largely thanks to the massive presence of the revolutionary and the spiritual movements in the state since the early decades of 20th century,” he pressed.

Outranking India from wealth redistribution to women’s rights

Born in the struggle against revisionism and sectarianism in the international communist movement in order to “defend the tenets of Marxism-Leninism,” according to Vijayan, the CPI (M)’s governance has pushed Kerala to have India’s highest literacy late at 93.9 percent, highest life expectancy rate at 77 years and therefore its best Human Development Index score at 0.712 in 2015.

Since its LDF coalition government took office on May 25, 2016, lawmakers have also put in place a number of progressive policies that tackle issues ranging from racism to labor rights to gender equality.

Meanwhile, in a country still battling deep-seated discrimination against those deemed lower caste, “Kerala had eradicated untouchability and casteism long before India’s independence,” explained Ahamed. In the past year, Kerala’s government has conducted some 6,000 “I have no caste” campaigns across the state.

The population, known as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the country, have also been allocated the biggest set of funds in the state’s budget for 2017.

Feminist initiatives have also soared under the LDF’s governance. This month it became the first state in the country to install sanitary napkin vending machines in all its schools under its “She Pad” scheme, providing access to menstrual hygiene products to every young woman.

Corbyn has also supported Bolivia and Venezuela’s attempts to implement independent policies on numerous occasions

The West is anxiously awaiting the results of Thursday’s general elections in the United Kingdom, which pits Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn against Conservative incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May. Some observers hope that a win for Corbyn, who is virtually neck-and-neck with his opponent in some polls, will signal a seismic shift in U.K. politics.

Since Corbyn’s shocking ascent to a Labour Party once ruled by Tony Blair and his U.S.-loyal neoliberal clique, the leftist has been relentlessly attacked for his past positions on issues ranging from his opposition to atomic weaponry to his solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israeli settler-colonialism, his opposition to apartheid in South Africa and, consequently, the insinuation that he has links to “extremists” and alleged “terrorists.”

While Corbyn has been called the British equivalent of liberal Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the comparison doesn’t quite do justice to the British politician’s progressive stances.

Jeremy Corbyn has proven himself to harbor progressive attitudes that are unacceptable to many in the U.K., where British ruling figures and well-off British workers alike cling to colonial attitudes toward the Global South rooted in an identity many characterize as essentially “imperialist.” The Labour Party has hardly been different — while it has sought to look out for the interests of British workers to some extent, the party has also historically supported the repression of anti-colonial uprisings in Burma, India, Iraq, Nigeria and Palestine while harboring pro-war and pro-U.S. attitudes.

“ACCREVEN strongly denounces the repudiable act carried out against the statues of two patriots and pro-independence leaders who made the cause of liberation of the peoples of our America their own,” the organization said in a statement published on its website.

The attacks were described as “provocative, disrespectful and (acts of) vandalism,” accusing the assailants of being “men who hate and destroy.”

Last week violent groups belonging to the Venezuelan opposition put hoods over the statues of Marti and Brion, a military leader from Curacao who fought in the Venezuelan war of independence — both located in the Chacaito Plaza in Caracas.

“A profound anti-imperialist, Jose Marti did not hesitate to express his particular love for Venezuela,” the statement added.

“We claim the legacy of the Apostle and the guide of all Cuban generations inside and outside of Cuba. We reaffirm our love and respect for the history, symbols and Cuban culture of Venezuela and all the peoples of the world,” said the document.

In reference to the historical figure of the Cuban national hero, the communique reiterated that Marti never covered his face to tell his truth.

A hood can not turn off the eyes of the teacher, nor hide in his eyes the sense of good and justice. A hood will not turn off the penetrating light of a man who was able to see a thousand years into the future. A hood will never stop love as a revolutionary energy,” concluded the text.

In addition to economics, the book also delves into Fidel’s approach to questions of political ideology, science and humanism.

A new book exploring the political and economic thought of the late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has been released which collects the work of various intellectuals, scholars and journalists who explore the iconic leader’s views.

Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specializing in Disasters and Serious Epidemics is being recognized once again: the medical team is set to receive this week the Dr. Lee Jong-wook Memorial Prize for Public Health from the World Health Organization.